[% setvar title The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-07-10 %]
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<a name='The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-07-10'></a><h1>The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 2004-07-10</h1>
<p>Another week down, another summer summary. On a Monday no less. Last
week I even managed to get the summary to the mailing lists before the
Perl 5 Porters summary. I may have been even more surprised that Rafael
by that. Let's see if I can do it again.</p>
<p>We'll kick off with perl6-internals as usual (though it was actually
the quieter list this week).</p>
<a name='The Pie-thon charge'></a><h2>The Pie-thon charge</h2>
<p>A good deal of this week's work was Pie-thon related, what with the
looming deadline and all. The effort hasn't been exactly helped by
Dan's problems with unreliable laptops. However, it's apparent that the
effort is helping to flush all sorts of issues out.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a06110400bd0f8334ae87@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[10.0.1.3] -- Dan thinks about generic new PMCs</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a06110402bd0fa201e6d9@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[10.0.1.3] -- Dan on parrot/python opcodes</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=40EDA2CD.10105@toetsch.at' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a> -- Getting Python::Bytecode to work</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=40EF0449.3090708@toetsch.at' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a> -- Leo's summary of Pie-thon activities</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.58.0407111618380.28558@sprite.sidhe.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a> -- a new
Python::Bytecode</p>
<a name='Changing the Perl 6 Guard'></a><h2>Changing the Perl 6 Guard</h2>
<p>The Perl Foundation is looking for a good person to take on the
responsibility of getting the Perl 6 compiler working. Parrot's reached
the point where it can probably support all of Perl 6 (or can be made
to support it), and the Perl 6 design is (while not complete) good
enough to start implementing. The catch is Dan's not got the time to
work on Parrot and implementing Perl 6 as well. So, we need a
volunteer.</p>
<p>Read Dan's job spec and if you think you've got the skills (especially
the people skills) then Allison Randal and the rest of the Perl 6 Cabal
will be very happy to hear from you. Austin Hastings attempted to
volunteer Luke Palmer, but Luke's keeping schtum. Personally I think
he'd be a cracking candidate for the post, but he's the only person who
can decide to volunteer.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a06110405bd10535b9d0e@' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a>[10.0.1.3] -- The job ad</p>
<a name='Parrot m4'></a><h2>Parrot m4</h2>
<p>Bernhard Schmalhofer posted a patch to get the parrot implementation of
m4 working again.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=rt-3.0.11-30613-91966.11.3421530711931@perl.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='native_pbc fixes'></a><h2>native_pbc fixes</h2>
<p>Jarkko Hietaniemi posted a bunch of changes to get the native_pbc tests
working on 64 bit platforms. Thanks Jarkko, it's good to see another
Perl 5 Porter working on Parrot.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=40F06E5C.5020100@iki.fi' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Meanwhile, in perl6-language'></a><h1>Meanwhile, in perl6-language</h1>
<a name='Just like the old days'></a><h2>Just like the old days</h2>
<p>Matija Papec wondered if it would be possible to continue to use simple
unquoted hash keys (a la <code>$hash{MYKEY}</code>) instead of the new
<code>%hash«MYKEY»</code> syntax. &quot;Of course!&quot; replied Luke Palmer, posting a
macro to fix things up. The thread moved on to discussing the sorts of
macros/operators that it'd be possible to implement. It got scary when
Luke and Larry talked about writing a macro to declare new grammatical
categories that could be used to declare subsequent macros/operators.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20040706185704.46606.qmail@onion.perl.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Predeclaration of subs'></a><h2>Predeclaration of subs</h2>
<p>Noting that it was now possible to write</p>
<pre>    $obj.meth &quot;foo&quot; </pre>
<p>where, in Perl 5, one would have to write <code>$obj-&gt;meth(&quot;foo&quot;)</code>,
Luke Palmer wondered whether there would still be a requirement to
predeclare <code>foo</code> in order to be able to say</p>
<pre>    foo &quot;bar&quot;, &quot;baz&quot;;</pre>
<p>He went on to wonder how the new rules affected</p>
<pre>    method evil($x is rw)</pre>
<p>Larry gave one of his thinking aloud answers. Essentially, there's
context trickiness to be worked out, but he thinks that requiring method
calls to evaluate their arguments in a list context and requiring
predeclaration of functions that force scalar contexts on their
arguments should be good enough to avoid ambiguity.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20040707014122.GA5452@babylonia.flatirons.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Graphemes and codepoints and bytes, oh my!'></a><h2>Graphemes and codepoints and bytes, oh my!</h2>
<p>The discussion of Perl 6's Unicode handling continued for another week.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=20040708030951.GB16305@wall.org' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Scalar subscripting'></a><h2>Scalar subscripting</h2>
<p>Guatam Gopalakrishnan wondered about the meaning of <code>$a[0]</code> now that
array subscripting was done using <code>@a[0]</code>. He proposed that it could
be used for 'peeking into scalars', particularly strings.</p>
<p>Luke Palmer pointed out that <code>$a[0]</code> actually expands to <code>$a.[0]</code>
which, when <code>$a</code> is an array, is an array subscript as per usual. He
pointed out that this had also come up in the ongoing &quot;Graphemes and
codepoints and bytes&quot; thread, where such things as <code>$str.bytes[0]</code> had
been discussed.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=a3ada2d104070804124184a442@mail.gmail.com' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='C style commas'></a><h2>C style commas</h2>
<p>Michele Dondi is another person who doesn't like the thought of losing
the ability to say</p>
<pre>   print, next if /stgh/;</pre>
<p>or something very like it, so he induced deja vu in your Summarizer by
suggesting something involving <code>then</code>. Larry pointed out that Perl 6's
comma would still work perfectly well in this case.</p>
<p>The thread expanded into a discussion of various issues to do with
statement modifiers, in particular <code>do {...} while ...</code>, which
continues to be illegal in core Perl 6.</p>
<p><a href='http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.58.0407091036010.4051@q.pcteor1.mi.infn.it' target='_blank'>groups.google.com</a></p>
<a name='Announcements, Apologies, Acknowledgements'></a><h1>Announcements, Apologies, Acknowledgements</h1>
<p>Quote of the week comes from Larry Wall: &quot;I'm also trying to learn perl6
after using perl5 for some time.&quot; I think it probably applies to all of
us.</p>
<p>If you find these summaries useful or enjoyable, please consider
contributing to the Perl Foundation to help support the development of
Perl. You might also like to send me feedback at
mailto:<a href='mailto:pdcawley@bofh.org.uk'>pdcawley@bofh.org.uk</a></p>
<p>You could also wish me luck on Tuesday 12th of July when I'll be
interviewing for a place to train as a maths teacher. (You only have to
read these summaries to realise why I'm not after training as an
English teacher).</p>
<p><a href='http://donate.perl-foundation.org/' target='_blank'>donate.perl-foundation.org</a> -- The Perl Foundation</p>
<p><a href='http://dev.perl.org/perl6/' target='_blank'>dev.perl.org</a> -- Perl 6 Development site</p>
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